Pastors and herbalists advised against claiming to have cure for AIDS

Kromoase (Ash), July 20, GNA- A medical practitioner has advised herbalists and pastors who claim to have discovered a cure for the dreadful disease, HIV/AIDS to cease making such claims since they were false and designed to mislead innocent people.

Dr C.K. Osabutey, lecturer at the School of Medical Sciences (SMS) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), made it clear that the search for a cure for AIDS was still on-going and that no individual or institution has yet been able to develop any medicine for the treatment and cure of the disease. Dr Osabutey gave the advice at an AIDS education campaign programme organised by the Kwadaso-Aburaso HIV/AIDS Committee at Kromoase in the Bosomtwe-Atwima-Kwanwoma District at the weekend. The programme was aimed at further sensitising the youth of the community and school children, in particular on the dangers of HIV/AIDS and strategies that they could adopt to avoid falling victims to the disease.

Dr Osabutey, who is also the Director of the Millennium Hospital, said by their false claims, much herbalists and pastors "are only succeeding in encouraging more people to engage in pre-marital and casual sex, thereby increasing the rate of spread of HIV/AIDS". "Because people are told by such false herbalists and pastors that they have a cure to the disease, they go into sex without using any condoms with the hope that, after all, they could get treatment when infested by the disease", he said.

Nana Atta-Sah Okogyeabour, chief of Kromoase, suggested to the government to take a second look at the AIDS menace with the view to coming out with a policy to quarantine any person found infested with the disease. He was of the belief that because AIDS patients, "are allowed their freedom and made to stay in normal society, most of them have deliberately decided to infect innocent people with the disease".

Alhaji Oheneba Kyem, chairman of the Kwadaso-Aburaso HIV/AIDS Committee, advised the youth to entirely abstain from sex until marriage and not to experiment with their life by resorting to even the use of condoms at their age. He said even though condoms were good, they were not meant to be used by unmarried youth for experiments, stressing, "even the condoms are not 100 percent perfect since they could also burst".